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FTER the signature of the truce with the United Provinces, preparations were made for transporting the Moors to Africa. These preparations excited the apprehensions of their protectors, and again the Valencian nobles drew a vigorous remonstrance against a measure so fraught with injustice and ruin, which they sent, by deputies chosen from their own. body, to court. It was unavailing. In September, the edict was published, enjoining all men, women, and children of the Moorish race, under pain of death, to hold themselves in readiness within three days, for being conducted to the sea-coast, and there put on board the ships provided for their transportation to foreign parts. Their property, beyond Their property, beyond what they could carry with them, was adjudged to the lords whose vassals they were; but six families in every hundred were allowed to be temporarily detained by such lords, for the purpose of instructing the Christian inhabitants in the management of the drains, aqueducts, rice plantations, sugar works, manufactures, and such other kinds of business as had been carried on solely by the Moors. Children under four years of age might also remain behind; and where one parent was a Christian, children up to the age of seven might remain with that Christian parent.

Many of the Spanish nobles not only refused to profit by the confiscation of property which the edict gave them, but they assisted the Moors in disposing of their effects, and in carrying away with them whatever could be conveniently transported; and many of them actually embarked with their vassals, to insure their good treatment on ship

board, and afford what aid they could in negotiating their establishment in Africa. The Duke of Gandia thus accompanied twenty thousand of his vassals, the loss of whom reduced him from immense wealth to comparative poverty. They reached Tremecen in safety; and were there kindly received, and comfortably settled.

The intelligence of the prosperous voyage of this first band of exiles, if it did not reconcile the Moors to their fate, relieved many of their fears. They embarked without resistance; and becoming impatient to get through the impending evils, many freighted ships for their own conveyance, rather than wait their turn in the vessels provided by government. But now every species of calamity seemed to conspire against these persecuted people. As the season advanced numbers were shipwrecked, and never reached their destination. Of those who hired vessels for themselves, many were robbed and murdered, and their women barbarously outraged by the crews; and even of those who landed upon the Barbary coast, numbers were almost as cruelly treated by the wild and wandering Arabs. One hundred thousand persons are computed to have perished in one way or another, within a few months of their expulsion from Valencia.

No Moors now remained in Valencia except a few young children, whom certain pious ecclesiastics and their female devotees had caused to be stolen from their parents at the moment of embarkation, in order to educate them in the Christian faith, and some bands of outlying mountaineers. The numbers of these last did not exceed thirty thousand. And thus did Philip, in the course of a few months, banish at least one million of his most, if not his

only, industrious and ingenious subjects. The Moors are said to have revenged themselves by managing the betrayal of Larach, one of the very few fortresses remaining to the Spaniards of their once large African possessions, into the hands of the Corsairs.

The remaining transactions of Philip III.'s reign relate wholly to the affairs of Germany, where the war, known by the name of the Thirty Years' War, broke out. Matthias had succeeded his brother Rodolph as emperor; and as he, and all his yet living brothers, were childless, his succession became an important question. Philip was the legitimate heir, as the son of Anne, the emperor's eldest sister. But Philip was not ambitious of re-uniting the immense dominions of Charles V., and willingly resigned his right in favor of Ferdinand, the brother of his deceased queen Margaret, and grandson to Ferdinand I., by his younger son Charles.

In February 1621, Philip sank under an illness that had long been growing upon him. He is said never to have recovered from the pain he endured when convinced of the unfortunate condition into which Spain had fallen, and which he felt himself quite incapable of remedying. From that moment a deep melancholy seized upon his spirits, and his health gradually declined. He died at the age of forty-two, leaving three sons, Philip, prince of Asturias, Ferdinand, already a cardinal and archbishop of Toledo, and Charles, still a child; and two daughters, Anne, queen of France, and Maria.

Philip IV. was only sixteen when he ascended the throne. During his long reign of forty-four years, the downfall of Spain was yet more fearfully accelerated. The Dutch fleets rode triumphant in the Indian and American seas. They intercepted the return of Spanish treasure, and of Portuguese merchandise. They subdued the greater part of the large Portuguese empire in India and Brazil. They sacked Lima in Peru, where they made an immense booty, and they took several of the smaller West Indian islands. The politicians of the day, who had not yet discovered that liberty is the invigorating principle as well of military enterprise, as of internal policy and commercial industry, beheld with amazement a handful of fishermen actually acquiring wealth, strength, and power, during the continuance of a war which was wholly exhausting the

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apparently inexhaustible resources of Spain, so lately the terror of Europe.

Whilst this struggle was going on between Spain and her revolted provinces, 1622-1623, the Thirty Years' War was raging in Germany, by the intervention of new parties, whenever its flames appeared likely to be extinguished for want of fuel. In 1623, the fine-spun web of policy, that had insured England's neutrality, was broken through by the haughty tempers of two overbearing favorites.

The Prince of Wales, impatient of the endless obstacles that delayed the negotiation for his marriage, had been easily persuaded by the romantic Duke of Buckingham to visit Spain, and by his unexpected presence hasten the conclusion. An act of gallantry so unusual in a royal suitor was well calculated to charm Spaniards, and the reserved demeanor of Charles suited their ideas of royal decorum. Accordingly the treaty seems to have proceeded more rapidly and cordially than before, although difficulties still occurred respecting the papal dispensation, and Spanish etiquette allowed the bridegroom few opportunities of even seeing his promised bride. promised bride. During these delays a quarrel took place between Olivarez and Buckingham, whose bold licentiousness was most offensive to Castilian pride; and the impetuous English favorite immediately exerted his unbounded influence over Charles, to induce him to return home, break off the marriage, and espouse Henrietta Maria of France, a daughter of Henry IV., instead of the infanta. And what seems yet stranger, he prevailed upon James I. to abandon a match upon which he had so long set his heart, to effect which he had made such sacrifices. The infanta some years later married the emperor's eldest son, afterwards Ferdinand III.

Upon the cessation of Italian hostilities, Olivarez, the Spanish generalissimo, devoted his whole attention to the Dutch and German wars, and afforded somewhat more assistance to the emperor. But he could gain no success against the Dutch; and a deep feeling of rivalry and hatred was hourly increasing between the count-duke and Cardinal Richelieu, the equally ambitious, and more able, prime minister of France. So long as the power of France was weakened by civil wars with the Huguenots, Richelieu confined his inimical measures against Spain and Austria to intriguing with all the states opposed

to them, through either political or religious motives, and affording liberal pecuniary supplies to the German Protestants. In 1635, France was internally tranquil, the Huguenots, and the members of the royal family who detested the minister, being alike subdued; and Richelieu took the opportunity of an attack made by a Spanish army upon the Archbishop of Treves, an ally of France, whom they despoiled of his dominions, and made prisoner, to declare war. He immediately prepared to invade the Netherlands and the Milanese. A revolt in Catalonia later on induced the Catalonians to seek assistance from Louis XIII., which was gladly rendered them. Louis XIII. was proclaimed Count of Barcelona, and French troops were poured into Catalonia, which, henceforward, became one of the chief theatres of the war between France and Spain. It was here carried on with vigor, and produced obstinate sieges, gallant defences, marked by patient endurance of great privations, and innumerable actions of brilliant courage, but no decisive battle, or very important results.

A spirit of dissatisfaction had long been growing amongst the Portuguese. Their colonies were neglected; a great part of Brazil, and a yet larger portion of their Indian empire, had fallen into the hands of the Dutch; Ormus, and their other possessions in the Persian Gulf, had been conquered by the Persians; their intercourse with their remaining colonies was harassed and intercepted; their commerce with the independent Indian states, with China and with Japan, was here injured, and there partially destroyed, by the enterprising merchants and mariners of Holland; whilst at home the privileges secured to them as the price of their submission, were hourly, if not flagrantly, violated by their Spanish masters.

The country ripened for revolt and a conspiracy headed by the Duke of Braganza was hatched to overthrow the Spanish rule. The 1st of December, 1640, was the day appointed for the insurrection. Early in the morning the conspirators approached the palace in four well-armed bands. At eight o'clock, Ribeiro, the Duke of Braganza's law-agent, fired a pistol, the preconcerted signal, and each band instantly attacked its allotted post. Don Miguel d'Almeida fell upon the German guard, and surprising them unarmed, soon mastered them. Don Francisco Mello, grand hunts

man, accompanied by a priest bearing a crucifix in one hand and a sword in the other, led a body of citizens against a fort adjoining the palace. They bore down all before them, and quickly made the Castilian garrison prisoners. Another party released all prisoners incarcerated for political offences.

They were now masters of the palace, from the windows of which the successful conspirators proclaimed liberty and John IV.; an immense concourse of people, who had assembled without, joyfully reechoing the national cry. Meanwhile, Ribeiro with his party were seeking for Vasconcellos, the vicequeen's secretary, who was regarded as the real governor of the country, and to whom every odious measure was ascribed. At the first alarm Vasconcellos had concealed himself in a closet behind a heap of papers, and some time elapsed ere his enemies could find him. At length a maid-servant pointed out his retreat. He was instantly dragged forth, pierced with innumerable wounds, and flung out of the window, amongst the populace, who vented their hatred by cruelly mangling his corpse; and shouts of "The tyrant is dead!" arose intermixed with those of "God save John IV., king of Portugal!"

The vice-queen was still to be secured, and the principal conspirators assembled at the door of her apartments, whilst the mob without clamorously threatened to fire the palace. Margaret, deeming what had occurred a mere burst of general indignation against Vasconcellos, still hoped to preserve her authority. Her door was thrown open, and presenting herself, attended by the primate and her ladies, she said, "Senhors, I confess that the secretary deserved the people's hatred, and your resentment, by his insolence and misconduct. But be satisfied with what you have done. Thus far the tumult may be ascribed wholly to popular rancor against Vasconcellos; but consider that, if you persist in such disorders, you will incur the guilt of rebellion, and make it impossible for me to plead in your behalf to the king." Don Antonio de Menezes answered, that they acknowledged no king but the Duke of Braganza; and her further remonstrances were cut short, by shouts of "God save John IV., king of Portugal!"

The revolution thus wisely planned, secretly matured, and happily executed, was now complete.

Portugal had recovered her independence, and replaced the legitimate descendant and representative of her ancient sovereigns upon the throne.

In 1646 Spain was threatened with the loss of her Neapolitan dominions. The imposition of a new tax by an unpopular viceroy led to an insurrection headed by a fisherman named Massaniello. The fisherman was executed, but the revolt was subdued with no little difficulty. Spain concluded a peace with the United Provinces in 1648, which was shortly afterward followed by the Peace of Westphalia, which arrayed and settled such a mass of conflicting interests, that it was considered as the fundamental law of Europe until the French Revolution overthrew all established political relations.

In Catalonia Philip was successful. In the Netherlands disputes arose between Condé and the Spanish generals, and the abilities of Turenne balanced those of the rebel prince. England, too, under the vigorous administration of Cromwell, joined in the war against Spain. By her assistance Dunkirk was taken, and the greater part of what is now called French Flanders overrun. In Italy, Spanish influence had now sunk so low, that all the petty powers declared for France.

Failures and exhaustions on both sides had now produced a mutual desire for peace between France and Spain, but an obstacle seemingly insurmountable opposed its conclusion. The chief condition proposed by France was the marriage of Louis XIV. with Philip's daughter Maria Theresa, since her brother's death the acknowledged heiress of the Spanish crown; and Philip would not listen to a proposal that might expose his dominions to the possible risk of falling to the crown of France. His objection was, however, removed, when in 1657 his second wife, Marianne of Austria, his own niece, bore him a son. Negotiations were set on foot; and, in November, 1659, Don Louis de Haro, and Cardinal Mazarin, meeting in the Isle of Pheasants, in the middle of the boundary river, the Bidassoa, concluded and signed the treaty, known by the name of the Pyrenees. The war with England ceased the following year, upon the restoration of Charles II.; it should seem without any treaty.

Spain had now no enemy but Portugal, and exerted herself to reduce this last remaining rebellion. The young king, Alfonso VI., had suffered a paralytic attack in his infancy, from which it is alleged

that he never completely recovered, either in body or mind. Considerable mystery hangs, nevertheless, over his character and history, some of the vices and extravagances of which he is accused appearing to be inconsistent with the extreme debility attributed to him. What appears certain is, that he indulged in many vicious and silly propensities, gave way to unbridled violence, offended the nobility, by selecting for his favorites two Genoese of inferior birth, named Conti; and whilst he refused to attend the councils of state with his mother, impatiently demanded the surrender of her authority.

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In June, 1662, however, the queen professed her readiness to resign the regency, provided the Contis, to whom she ascribed much of Alfonso's misconduct, were first removed from about his person. This was done with a strange sort of violence. queen held the king in conversation in her own apartments, whilst a party of noblemen seized the two Genoese in the palace, put them on board a ship, and dispatched them to Brazil. The king showed little feeling or resentment upon the occasion, but at once transferred his affection to the Count of Castel Melhor, a gentleman of his chamber, under whose conduct he secretly left Lisbon for Alcantara, and thence extorted from his mother an authority which she had declared herself willing to surrender. She lingered some months at court, vainly striving to gain influence over her son, if not to recover her authority; but in March, 1663, was driven away by the insults of the king and his creatures, and retired to a convent.

The Spanish forces were decisively beaten by the Portuguese at the battle of Villa Viçosa, and from that moment the question of the permanence of Portuguese independence, if it had ever been doubtful, was settled. On receiving the tidings of this defeat, Philip said, "It is the will of God," and fainted away. Philip IV. did not long survive the defeat of Villa Viçosa. He died on the 17th of September of the same year, 1665, leaving by his second wife one only surviving son, Charles II., a sickly child of three years, and a daughter Margaret. In Portugal, meanwhile, the queen mother was dead; the king's follies and vices are represented as hourly increasing, and his marriage, which was expected to operate some sort of reform in his conduct, only precipitated a catastrophe that could not, in all likelihood, have been long delayed. The wife

selected for him was a princess of a branch of the House of Savoy, settled in France, the second daughter of the Duke of Nemours. She arrived in the Tagus on the morning of the 2d of August, 1666; and the king immediately adopted towards her the line of conduct in which he afterwards persevered. It was not till late in the evening that Castel Melhor's entreaties and remonstrances could induce him to go on board the vessel, in order to receive and conduct her on shore. He did at length comply, and went through the marriage ceremony; but it proved utterly impossible to prevail upon him even to visit her apartment that night. The court now became a scene of faction and disorder.

This state of affairs lasted till the 21st of Nov. 1667; when the queen, suddenly withdrawing to the nunnery of la Esperanza, wrote thence to the king, that she was weary of ill usage, and that, as he knew she was not his wife, she desired their nominal marriage might be annulled, her portion restored, and she herself sent home to France. This step seems to have been the preconcerted opening of the hitherto masked batteries against the king. The next day passed in negotiations, professedly tending to prevail upon the queen to return to the king, and upon the king to accept the infante as his colleague. Both pertinaciously refused; and early on the morning of the 23d, the council of state in a body waited upon his majesty, and required him to acknowledge his own incapacity, and to abdicate in favor of his brother. This proposal he of course rejected, yet more decidedly than the other; but the council was now joined by the infante, the municipality of Lisbon, and the Juez do Povo, or judge of the people, a sort of tribune of the people. These collective authorities locked the king in his chamber, until at last, on the evening of the same day, he signed a form of abdication prepared by them. The deposed monarch, either in folly' or satire, chose a boy employed in his kennel for his companion, and was kept in easy confinement for some years at one of the Azores.

May 1668 beheld the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, by which Louis XIV. disgorged most of his acquisitions upon the stern front presented to him by England, the United Provinces, and Sweden, retaining, however, a large slice of what was thenceforward called French Flanders.

The queen regent of Spain was distasteful to the people, and she was confined in a convent at Toledo, her confessor, Valenzuela, banished to the Philippines, and Don John placed in the keeping of the young King Charles who, in 1675, was in his fourteenth year.

During Valenzuela's administration, the war with France broke out anew. French intrigue having detached Sweden and England from the Triple Alliance, Louis invaded the United Provinces, under the idle pretence of resenting a treaty concluded between them and Spain, for mutual protection in the Low Countries. The United Provinces had no other ally; they had lost during peace the high courage that marked their revolt from Spain; they were rapidly overrun, and, in 1672, reduced almost to despair; whilst Spain was compelled to disavow an endeavor of the Count of Monterey, governor of the Netherlands, to assist them.

It was from the very depth of their danger and despair that the means of preservation arose. The House of Nassau had been driven from the government by the republican party, and its head, the young Prince of Orange, afterwards William III. of England, was then living in obscurity and inaction. He took advantage of the terror excited by the French victories, to gain the ascendency over the adverse faction which was suspected of partiality to Louis. He was named Stadtholder, the title of the Dutch chief magistrate; and under his able guidance the energies of the Seven Provinces revived, whilst the emperor united with Spain for their protection. The war, however, lasted for years; the Netherlands were again devastated, and in great part conquered, by France; and Louis further harassed Spain by inroads into Catalonia, and by exciting a rebellion in Sicily.

The reign of Charles was a most unhappy one. The king, who anxiously desired to promote and enforce all salutary measures, harassed by conflicting parties and interests, distracted between his love for his beautiful young queen, and his detestation of everything French, was fast sinking into a state of hypochondriacal disease. The finances of Spain were altogether ruined; the government was disorganized; the army had lost its reputation for courage and discipline; commerce was annihilated, and agriculture so nearly so, that famine was a con

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